Lynnville-Sully boys roll past North Mahaska

Nathan Russel takes in the easy layup. There were plenty to go around in the Hawks' win over North Mahaska on Tuesday.

The Lynnville-Sully boys got ahead of North Mahaska early and stayed there the entire night. The Hawks blew past their competition on Tuesday night, winning by a final score of 45-19. The Hawks defense, in particular, was outstanding. They only allowed six made buckets out of 40 attempts.

Lynnville-Sully came out in a zone defense that North Mahaska was unable to penetrate. The Warhawks cast three-pointers from well beyond the line and failed to hit on all but one, which came in the third quarter.

The Hawks cruised out to an 8-2 lead off of three pointers by TJ Cunningham and Connor Cullen. Those early outside makes forced the North Mahaska defense to try to close out on the shooters, leaving them exposed for inside buckets. Along with Cullen and Cunningham, Nathan Russell was able to get some easy buckets inside and the rout was on.

Early on in the second quarter, the Hawks switched to a press that was equally effective as their zone. This time, however, the defense resulted in turnovers and fast break layups as opposed to missed long-range jump shots. Everything the Hawks did on defense seemed to work and they led 29-6 at the intermission.

Usually a team that stays in man-to-man because of their general size advantage, the Hawks switched up their look on defense quite a bit. Coach Nick Harthoorn commented on the team’s gameplan coming in.

“A lot of time we play a lot of man-to-man in the halfcourt. We knew North Mahaska was going to try to slow the game down a bit,” Harthoorn said. “So, we knew tonight we had to get up and pressure to try to force the tempo of the game.”

There was somewhat less defensive intensity brought by the Hawks in the second half, but with their sheer size advantage along with the effectiveness of their scheme, the game never got any closer as the Hawks glided to victory.

“The guys did a great job of executing the gameplan. We also did a good job on the boards. I thought we ran the floor well and got some easy buckets,” Harthoorn said. “You’ve got to feel good about holding a team to 19 points. Our effort was excellent. We pressed a little bit tonight, which is a little different for us. I thought the guys did a great job of executing the gameplan defensively”

Lynnville-Sully has a rematch this Friday against BGM, which the Hawks squeaked by in their first match, winning 42-40.

Harthoorn anticipated another tough matchup for the first place Hawks and relished the opportunity to sharpen the team up for the game.

“It’s going to be an important game for us,” Harthoorn said. “We have two days of practice here. We need to keep working on the details and the little things that are going to make us better defensively. On offense we need to keep moving the ball side to side and creating gaps.”